Understanding the ICD-10 Impact on Dental Billing Practices

If you are a dental practitioner, with the ICD 10 implementation deadline nearing, you are worried not just about successfully transitioning to ICD 10 CM. But also whether you fully understand ICD 10, for example, do you understand its coding intricacies, is your dental practice geared to be on ICD without any operational or financial adversities, is your practice technologically ready to handle ICD 10 and so on.

The need to understand ICD 10 and its applications intricately is more important than it was to understand ICD 9. ICD 10 is more specific in nature than its predecessor accounting for finer ailments and sub-ailments which either used to be covered by fewer codes, each code covering multiple sub-conditions, or altogether miss being covered.

In the context of dentistry, by netting these finer dental areas in its coding network through greater classifications, ICD 10 CM (with approximately 69,000 codes) presents you the opportunity to claim the areas of dental billing which previously used to go unclaimed or result in rejected claims falling out of a less coherent net of ICD 9 CM with 13,600 codes, amounting to sizable chunks of unpaid dental services.

However, this intricate nature also requires a nuanced understanding for billing and coding success.

The procedural and diagnostic codes contained in ICD 10 CM are available under two categories, Diseases of the Digestive System and Factors influencing health status and contact with health services. This means you not only have to figure out which codes will apply to the services you provide but also establish documentarily that they belong to the ICD 10 categories and subcategories you are coding them under. These areas are key to billing and coding and although these may be just two areas – coding and supporting documentation – they have a wide impact cutting across operations of your dental practice.

To address these areas related to dental billing, you have to:

Train your staff on ICD 10 CM charting and coding

Perform a successful cross-walk between treatment and diagnostic codes

Ensure proper storage of documentation and diagnostic records for easy reference and usage

MBC has helped several dental practices, both in small and big cities of the US, to overcome their ICD 10 CM dental medical billing concerns – transition to ICD 10 CM successfully and be on it smoothly. MBC’s Revenue Management Consulting services can help you by assessing your revenue management cycle and gearing it up for ICD 10 by facilitating smooth flow of dental data, installation of proper software applications and providing guidance on staff training on how to handle ICD 10 CM.

Medicalbillersandcoders.com the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US, has also been helping many dental practices overcome ICD 10 concerns with its Outsourcing services handling the entire range of activities involved in dental billing and coding starting from preparation of claims through submission to post-submission follow-ups. Our service modules are flexible that allow you to pick and choose only those bits and pieces of our services that meet your coding needs so that you can avoid paying additional cost.